


Jacob Black Deserved Better

by gingercinderella



Series: Some Twilight Characters Deserved Better [2]
Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, and not a manipulative dick, but also not in love with a literal baby, let jacob black be happy, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:09:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25677868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingercinderella/pseuds/gingercinderella
Summary: Can we consider what would have happened if Jacob respected Bella's boundaries and didn't act like a manipulative dick and then have to fall in love with a baby?Cause that's what we're doing here.
Relationships: Jacob Black/Renesmee Cullen
Series: Some Twilight Characters Deserved Better [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861945
Kudos: 34





	Jacob Black Deserved Better

Jacob welcomes Bella into his life when she arrives with motorcycles. He’d heard Charlie talking to Billy when the men were watching sports on the weekends, and he knew that she’d been just about catatonic the last while.

Charlie would be overjoyed that she’s reaching out, the good part of his brain thought. Wouldn’t be thrilled about the bikes, but that’s just details. He’s a big picture guy.

The other part of his brain is pleased that she reaches out to  _ him. _

Quil and Embry laugh at him about hanging out with a pretty girl, when they’re in the garage three weeks later and he tries to hurry them out before she shows up. He mentions it to her, says that Quil’s got a crush in a roundabout way of saying that he himself does, and she smiles darkly, like something is funny and horrifying.

“I don’t date,” she answers.

He’d seen the way her face looked when he arrived. The way her face still looks, when he gets brought up. It’s not about Jacob, it’s about the shit with that dick who left her hurting.

He can be the part that helps. And if that’s what it takes to have her in his life- to know that romance is off the table- it’s fine with him. When Quil asks him about it, he scoffs at the idea, and Jacob shoves his shoulder. 

When his legacy rips through him and manifests in a giant wolf, he hates that he hurts her. The look in her eyes hurts more than that first transformation did. And it hurts that she can’t just know, that this can’t be another stupid detail in his life and in their friendship, but Sam’s rules are law. She remains in the dark, and outside of his life, except for the hints he can leave for her, old details of the stories he told her that she was too busy overlooking at the time.

He wraps her in a hug when she remembers the stories he told her, when she can be in on the secret and back in on his life.

The pack rips the heads off of the two vampires that haunt Forks that spring. It’s what they’re made for, and once they realized what the redheaded one was after, it was easy.

He and Bella slip into an easy relationship. Back to sitting in his garage, breakfast at Emily’s, even cliff diving. There’s life back in Bella’s eyes and he’s proud that he helped put it there. She doesn’t want anything else from him, even as he’s growing to be a man and not just a kid in a flash of a second, and it’s clear that he’s not imprinting on her. (He’d wondered, before he saw her the first time. Maybe hoped.) 

But her no dating policy is firmly in effect and he respects that. Honest.

Bella doesn't come over on one Wednesday in April. He runs by her house that night and smells it. Sickly sweet and disgusting and  _ strong _ . The leech hadn't just shown up in her house, it was  _ still there. _

He phases back and climbs into her window and his fear isn't realized- at least the fear he'd been working under. No vampire is sucking her neck. She's not lifeless on the floor.

She's clinging to him on the bed, staring at him in the dark. Maybe that’s worse, he thinks.

“Hello, Jacob,” the leech says softly. Bella startles and turns to the window, but doesn't pull away from him. His arms tighten around her protectively.

“You're safe,” he whispers, a confirmation. He has to get out of here, tell Sam, tell the pack. “Are you back in town for good?” That would change things. They'd have to abide by the treaty lines again.

“Yes,” he answers.

“I'll come see you tomorrow, okay?” Bella says. She smiles at him in a way that melts how angry he is. She's happy. Thank god she's happy, he thinks. That’s no detail, that’s the most important thing of all.

The leech’s attention barely turns to him. “Thank you,” he says, and Jacob can't be sure what he's referring to but he's launching himself out the window before he can overthink it, to go report to Sam.

Charlie yells about it to Billy that weekend. Jacob knows he isn't supposed to hear, but he's curious. She had come back so briefly to La Push the day after, hugged him close and told him that she was so happy now, don't worry.

He didn't know what else to do but worry. According to Charlie, it's like the last six months had never happened. The pair of them make moon eyes at each other, spend all their time together. Charlie had been hoping that Bella would get with Jacob, it seems.

That ship had sailed the moment Bella saw the leech, Jacob wants to say, but he slinks from his garage and out to the woods.

She drops by for a quick visit occasionally, but she doesn't need him now. He used to be the lifeboat keeping her from drowning. He’s still bobbing in the water and she’s out of danger these days, it seems.

“And you have the pack!” She says, almost oblivious that it's not nearly the same, but he can't stand to see her sad, and he smiles and nods.

After Bella graduates, Charlie tells him about the wedding. Charlie looks confused about it- hadn't she learned from his own mistakes?- but Jacob is disgusted for his own reasons.

He attends in a borrowed tux and she's a vision in white, so alive and ecstatic about the whole affair. It softens his sour mood, because it's just so damn hard for him to be upset when the girl who was his closest friend is so happy.

He takes a turn on the dance floor with him. Seth lingers nearby, chatting with her high school friends and watching Jacob closely. Jacob asks her what's next.

She's going on a honeymoon. His hands tighten on her arms. “No,” he whispers.

The groom is there in an instant, shoving then apart.

Seth escorts him home, the both of them running back in the woods. So much for the borrowed tux, he thinks absently.

When Charlie comes by a few weeks later, he says that Bella is settled in at her Alaskan college. Her husband is there too, he admits, the moniker making his voice tug painfully.

Jacob wonders if she's alive or not, but doesn't allow himself to investigate. It would be easy to run up and find out, but not knowing is better.

The other Cullens leave town.

He meets Lindsay.

Charlie ages, grumbling about how he never gets to see his daughter. 

Jacob is sure she's dead, one way or the other, after enough time. The treaty- it might allow him to chase them down, but what would be the point? He'd never be able to kill her, if she’s become one of them. And killing him would hurt her so much. 

And his life has moved on. He's not that same kid- even if physically he looks the same. He asks Lindsay to marry him.

He has a daughter. She smiles up at him with adoration and he wonders how could he ever have wanted anything else.

He doesn't age. 

Vampires still run by. He chalks it up to the Cullen's legacy, loners still looking for the coven to fight. Those vampires had come by when they'd left briefly, he recalls. Both wanting to kill Bella. 

He's glad that she's indestructible these days, or beyond hurting.

He never stops phasing, taking over as pack leader when Sam quits so that he can age with Emily. Jacob looks the same as he had when he was seventeen, like a strong twenty five year old.

His lovely wife is not bound in the same way. 

His daughter has her own son, nearing age to become a wolf, when they bury her mother.

It has been a good life. 

The pack is back to three- like Sam, others stopped phasing, and there weren't enough vampires to support new ones. Two had been killed in a nasty fight twenty years ago. 

The Cullens return. 

The town has forgotten them, but they move into the old house.

Jacob has not forgotten.

The treaty, the treaty, he thinks desperately, and Seth is there, questioning if he knows that it's been broken.

He'd sworn to himself that it was better this way, when he didn't have to see her. Now, he couldn't be certain.

Bella would be dead, if the Cullens had stuck to the treaty.

She would be dead if they hadn't, he thinks.

He goes to the house, just to see, and phases before he leaves the woods.

Alice is outside to greet him. She looks confused.

“Been a while since I've had an afternoon just disappear,” she says stiffly.

“Is she here?” He asks. 

“Bella?” Alice calls.

His heart drops.

“Where is  _ he _ ?” He asks.

“Hunting,” Bella answers.

She's beautiful. Terribly beautiful. 

Jacob wants to sneer, but her face is radiant when she sees him and he could never make her unhappy, never deny her a smile.

“I missed you,” she exclaims, and slams into him with a hug that feels closer to a car crash into a metal pole.

He hugs her back, reflexively. How had he thought that he would be able to kill her? A fight with them could kill the whole pack, and for what?

He'd known many people the last sixty years. He'd never been as close to anyone outside the pack, or his wife, the way he was close to her. Some sick part of him felt like nothing had changed.

“You stink,” he complained, teasing.

“You smell like wet dog, yourself,” she answered, and gave his shoulder a shove that would send a lesser man to the floor. He stumbled.

“Who's this?” A voice called. A new one.

He thought he knew the Cullens. If they'd made  _ another  _ vampire- making Bella he could excuse, because he was weak as a person and he accepted that as soon as she'd hugged him- but if they'd done it again, then he'd-

His thoughts are cut short when the source of the voice emerges. 

Her face is undeniably reminiscent of Bella's, her eyes, her nose, her hair. And of Edward, too.

She's not so pale. 

Her eyes aren't red, or golden like Alice and Bella. 

His mind packs that away for later inspection. Details, irrelevant ones. 

“Jacob,” he whispers, introducing himself in a daze.

Bella's eyes narrow, and Alice cocks her head at the tone. 

Details. Irrelevant ones.

“Nice to meet you, I'm Renesmee,” she answers, gracefully walking down the stairs to greet him. She extends a hand and he shakes it. 

Her skin is hot, even against his own.

“You're…” He whispers. 

“Not a vampire? No, not quite.” She laughs at the implication.

That isn't his question. It's something closer to “You're my soulmate, right?” But that doesn't come out, either.

“Put those eyes back in their sockets or I'll put em there myself,” Bella says, steel in her voice.

“It's alright, mom, Jacob doesn't mean anything by it,” the gorgeous woman answers.

Mom.

His brain finally can find words again, can process what it’s feeling.

“Hi, Renesmee,” he breathes, the air filling his lungs like it's his first breath. She smells different than the rest, how had he not noticed before? Delicate and sweet, alive, and like home.

This is home now.

She’s his home.

When the Cullens move on, three years later, it's no question that he will go, too.

His grandson had passed boyhood and might become a wolf soon. If he did-the boy deserves the chance to do so without his grandfather there. And if the vampires left, perhaps he could be spared. Live normally.

Jacob holds onto his beloved and doesn’t let go, no matter where she takes him.


End file.
